Description
‘The Mathematische is Launhardt's claim to a prominent place in the history of economic analysis. . . . Launhardt achieves more in twenty pages than Böhm-Bawerk in about five hundred.’– Jurg Niehans, University of Bern, Switzerland

‘It is clear that this work is important to an understanding of the origins of welfare economics.’– Donald Rutherford, The Economic Journal

This is the first English translation of Launhardt’s Mathematische Begrundung der Volkswirtschaftslehre (1885), a major contribution to neoclassical economic theory which contains many important and original analyses.

This edition will provide the basis for a re-evaluation of Launhardt’s outstanding, but undervalued, contribution to economics. Taking the neoclassical emphasis on exchange as the central economic problem, Laundardt begins with a thorough treatment of the pure exchange model, then goes on to extend the treatment to the production of goods and the supply of labour, with a sophisticated general equilibrium perspective. It contains important analyses of savings and the role of capital goods, as well as an outstanding study of transport and the location of industry. Launhardt’s book can, with justice, with be described as the first comprehensive treatise on welfare economics.

Mathematical Principles of Economics will prove stimulating reading for economic theorists as well as those interested in the history of economics thought.